Title: Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jackson/Lydia
Word Count: 719
Summary: Jackson and his body issues
Warnings/Notes: Canon typical violence and gore; Creepy. Title and quote from 'Panthea' by Oscar Wilde.
Jackson’s body is a tool he uses, a weapon on the field, trained and honed to perfection.
It does nothing out of his purview, nothing he doesn’t want it to do. Until the day it doesn’t.
***
McCall’s dealer gouges him in the neck with his fingernails, the freak, and that’s when everything spins out of control.
Hallucinations, of smoke and fire and misery and it only gets worse.
***
After Derek bites him, he starts to ooze black bile trickling out of his eyes and ears, coughing it up like a cancer.
He loses time. He wakes to showering blood of himself naked, not knowing how he got that way.
The bite didn’t take and this wasn’t supposed to be how things went.
***
After the paralysis wears off, he goes and lies to the Sheriff for Derek and his pack of psycho wolves. Issac freaks him out.
He must have passed muster, but apparently they’re gunning for Lydia now and he joins McCall and his ragtag gang to save her from them after he overhears Issac and Erica talking about attacking her, killing her.
He shouldn’t have been able to hear them, is the thing.
He kisses Lydia and feels something on his neck, tight and spreading.
The last thing he sees before his vision goes black is Lydia’s red hair, colors muted in the darkness of McCall’s room.
***
He wakes up in a transport van and this is new. At least there isn’t any blood.
Stilinski is spinning lies, and they aren’t even good ones but he can hear the conference he has with McCall and Allison outside. If he isn’t a wolf, then he has to be this other thing, then.
What else could it be?
***
He wakes up on top of Allison in the locker room, McCall there, looking angry, the room wrecked.
He remembers eating a snake in the biology lab before this, but why would he do that?
Another hallucination later that day: the snake coming out of his eye socket.
And he doesn’t remember much else after Harris leaves them in detention.
***
Lydia invites him to her party and he tries to tell her she doesn’t want him there, but he ends up going anyway.
After Matt ends up in the pool it kinda goes foggy after that.
He gets flashes of things, but they don’t make sense. Why would he be in the police station? Why would he rip and rend cops to ribbons? Why would he stand hostile guard over Stilinski and Derek? Why would he paralyze Allison and watch as Matt taunts her?
***
More questions: Why is he missing most of Spring Break from his memory? Why is he suddenly in the locker room, getting ready for their State Championship?
Danny gets through to him for a moment, and he warns Danny to run if he sees Jackson coming his way.
Flashes of things whispered in his ears and when the lights go out he thinks no but attacks himself anyway.
***
He feels a tight sense of … waiting. Becoming. His mouth feels fuller, sharper. He feels stronger.
The old man calls the shots and he attacks his, well they aren’t his friends, but he knows them.
The man withers after the bite, black bile gushing out of his mouth and he feels something uncurl in his chest.
This is his chance, he thinks distantly.
He spreads his arms out in surrender and Derek is on him instantly, claws deep in his stomach while another set -- Peter Hale? -- sinks into his back and his eyes close.
***
Lydia brings him back to himself.
It was always her, and if he could say the words, he would tell her he loves her.
As it is, he turns into a wolf, blue eyes shining, howling to the sky. She did that for him and he thinks its enough. He thinks she knows.
***
Jackson’s body is a tool he uses, a weapon on the field, trained and honed to perfection.
He is a man, and he was a lizard too, but now he’s a wolf instead.
Sometimes he doesn’t have control, but that’s ok. There are people he trusts that help him come back to himself.
He thinks a little loss of control is a good price to pay for what he’s gained in its place.
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